Title: Cognitive Flexibility in Dynamic Decision-Making: Unravelling Neurobehavioral Strategies
Description:
A PhD studentship position is available with Dr Silvia Maggi and Prof. Mark Humphries at the School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, in collaboration with Dr Hazem Toutounji at the Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, on a project entitled “Cognitive Flexibility in Dynamic Decision-Making: Unravelling Neurobehavioral Strategies ".
A growing need in the field of Behavioural Neuroscience is to enhance the analysis of decision-making behaviour across various species within dynamic environments. Conventional approaches, such as the psychometric curve, assume a stable environment and the use of a fixed strategy to solve a task, often averaging across multiple subjects.
However, it is crucial to characterise individual variations and variability across trials to comprehend how behaviour changes in uncertain and evolving environments. This project will create new, powerful machine-learning approaches to tracking an individual’s decision-making behaviour in an uncertain and changing world.
Our recent Bayesian inference algorithm (Maggi et al., 2023) enables us to track learning and understand how subjects learn by tracking subjects’ use of exploratory strategies. The project will extend this algorithm to solve the problems of determining which of a set of behavioural strategies a subject is using and how to incorporate evidence uncertainty into its detection of the learning of strategies and transitions between them. Using the extended algorithm on datasets of rodents and humans performing decision tasks will let us test a range of hypotheses for how correct decisions are learnt and what innate strategies are used.
The successful candidate should have a good honours degree (at least 2:1 or equivalent) in a relevant discipline, including physics, computer science, maths and psychology. A Master's qualification is not required at the point of application, but a Master's in a relevant discipline would be an advantage. Experience in programming with Matlab or Python is required, and experience in analysing time series data would be beneficial. The studentship is open to UK citizens; it will offer a stipend of £18,622 for a period of three years, subject to satisfactory progress.
The student will be part of the Computational Neuroscience Research Group within the School of Psychology. This Group includes Prof Mark van Rossum, Prof Mark Humphries, and Prof Stephen Coombes, bridging the School of Psychology with Mathematical Sciences. The Computational Neuroscience Group is a diverse and highly stimulating environment, including post-docs and PhD students. Within the School of Psychology, the diversity and multi-disciplinarity are enriched by strong research groups in Visual Neuroscience, Behavioural Neuroscience, Perception and Action, and Cognition and Language.
References:
Maggi et al., 2023 (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.30.505807v3.abstract)
Bähner et al., 2022 (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.14.516439v2.abstract)
Supervisors:
Dr Silvia Maggi (University of Nottingham), Prof Mark Humphries (University of Nottingham), Dr Hazem Toutounji (University of Sheffield)
How to apply:
All applications are to be made directly to the University, selecting PhD Psychology (36 months duration) as the course. Please apply at: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/pgstudy/how-to-apply/apply-online.aspx.
In the research proposal section please only include “Silvia Maggi’s advertised PhD position” in the title. Please note, the application will not be considered if you fail to do so. You are required to upload the following documents to your application:
- A CV.
- A cover letter.
- Two reference.
For additional queries about the project, please contact Dr Silvia Maggi or Prof. Mark Humphries.
The successful applicant will also receive £1,000 RTSG per annum to support their research.
The application deadline is 30 November 2023, starting 1st of February 2024
Posted on Tuesday 7th November 2023